


Looking Like Me

by Jade_II



Series: Professor Song [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Library Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_II/pseuds/Jade_II
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s standing in the console room of the TARDIS, one of the later ones she remembers, alone and… wearing the Doctor’s clothes? She looks down, fingering the sleeve of his jacket, and realises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking Like Me

**Author's Note:**

> Had to get this done before the finale. Extraordinarily grateful to Charina for beta-reading before the finale :)

It’s so sudden that at first River thinks it’s some sort of glitch in CAL’s systems.

 

She’s standing in the console room of the TARDIS, one of the later ones she remembers, alone and… wearing the Doctor’s clothes? She looks down, fingering the sleeve of his jacket, and realises.

 

No.

 

She’s wearing the Doctor’s _body_.

 

It’s a very strange glitch indeed, she decides, and laughs out loud in the Doctor’s voice.

 

“Charlotte,” she calls, giggling as she steps towards the console – or tries to, at any rate, because her coordination is a bit off and she somehow manages to trip on her own – his own – no, that’s too confusing. _Her_ own feet, she decides firmly, her present physical form notwithstanding, and climbs carefully back to them. “Charlotte,” she says again. “Charlotte, come and look at this. Did you do this on purpose?”

 

There’s no answer, and River sighs patiently. “Charlotte?” she repeats. “Ella, Joshua, are you in on this?”

 

Still the only sound is the quiet hum of the TARDIS.

 

Something about this feels off, River decides, and she goes to leave the simulation.

 

And she can’t.

 

It should be instant, just a flick of a thought – and there’s nothing. The walls of the ship around her remain as solid as if they were real.

 

“Charlotte…?” She’s not expecting an answer anymore, but she can’t help but check, one more time.

 

Nothing.

 

Turning uneasily, River considers the situation. If she’s really trapped here, then there could be something seriously wrong with CAL. Resting her hands on the console, she concentrates on the steady rhythm of the time rotor, something that always calmed her when she was alive, and she finds that this is no different.

 

Until a voice calls her name and she nearly jumps out of the Doctor’s skin.

 

A hologram flickers into life next to her and she feels her hearts – his hearts – _their_ hearts skip a beat as a shiver runs slowly down her spine.

 

He couldn’t have. He _wouldn’t_ have.

 

And if he did, then where the hell is he?

 

The holographic version of him standing beside her is rubbing his hands nervously. “River,” he begins, licking his lips. A slow smile spreads over his face and he looks up, eyes alight. “River, _River_. That is a _beautiful_ name, isn’t it? Oh, I’ve missed talking to you – it’s been a hundred years since I saw you last, did you know? No. No, of course you didn’t, how could you? No, yes, anyway. Right. I know what you’re going to say, River, but it was the only way. I’d almost given up hope really, it was just – you. I found the lost totem of Harifex – yes, I know, I know, you were looking for it for centuries but I may have… cheated a bit. Asked old Harifex himself where he’d hidden it – now don’t give me that look!”

 

River stops, mid eye-roll. Suddenly she’s blinking back tears, and she blames him entirely.

 

“Idiot,” she mutters.

 

“I knew you would say that.” For a moment the hologram seems to meet her eyes, and it’s almost, almost as if—

 

The recorded message interrupts before she can finish the thought. “But it works, River!” the Doctor exclaims, clapping his hands with glee. “It works, and I’m coming to get you!”

 

“Where are _you_ , then?” she demands angrily. “This is all very well, might take some getting used to, but—“

 

“Upload myself, download you, hey presto,” the Doctor concludes, gesturing delightedly.

 

Slowly, light dawns. “ _Upload yourself_ ,” she repeats. “You mean I’m stuck here in your body and I can’t even—“

 

“River, I’m so sorry for everything,” the Doctor says sincerely. “Please accept this as my deepest apology. Please live.”

 

The hologram disappears before she can yell at it any further. Floundering, she directs her rage at the TARDIS instead. “How could you let him _do_ this?” she demands. “Of all the stupid, idiotic plans…” Her voice dies down as she realises that they are landing somewhere, and she swallows. “Listen,” she continues more calmly, “If either of you think that I’m just going to fly off into the sunset without him…”

 

The doors swing open, and her voice dies completely.

 

He’s there.

 

River swallows again, her throat suddenly dry, and shakes her head. “No,” she insists, watching as he turns to face her. “No, no, you’ve got to be joking.”

 

The Doctor hesitates when he reaches the doorway and it’s all River can do to choke back a _hello sweetie_.

 

Instead, she runs for the doors and slams them in his face.

 

“Sorry,” she whispers through the wood, “but you and your ship seem to have gone slightly _insane_.” She turns, leaning heavily on the doors lest he try to open them, and seethes. “What were you _thinking_?” she demands loudly of the room at large. “That Doctor is two regenerations before me! Are you trying to rip a hole in the fabric of time?”

 

In response, the doors are thrown open behind her and she stumbles forward forcefully, landing on her knees in front of the console.

 

“I heard that,” says the Ninth Doctor’s voice as she turns to face him. “Eleven, eh? What happened, did I regenerate into a baby?”

 

River stiffens, inexplicably wounded. “Please leave,” she tells him evenly. “Anything might happen if we interact too much.”

 

The Doctor shrugs, leaning against the doorframe. “Can’t say that I care that much right at this moment.”

 

Oh God. He must be just post-Time War. And he’s being extra cocky because he thinks she’s _him_ , the sod.

 

River grits her teeth. “Fine,” she decides, getting to her feet. “Then I’ll leave.”

 

She pushes past him – is it her or is there a little buzz of electricity when they touch? – and into the sunny streets of…

 

London. 21st century. Summer.

 

Well, she decides after a moment, it could be worse.

 

The TARDIS has parked herself just next to Hyde Park Corner, and an unobtrusive foray into a well-dressed gentleman’s wallet soon has River licking an ice cream cone with the Doctor’s tongue – a fascinating experience – and wandering across the grass.

 

She’s in a very interesting predicament, to say the least.

 

It doesn’t really hit her until that moment that she’s just been brought back to life.

 

The sunshine beating down on her face and melting her ice cream cone is real sunshine, from a real sun, and the drips than run down onto her hand are real ice cream, leaving a real, cold trail across her skin. The children squealing on the swings in the distance, the elderly ladies taking the air, the couples out for a summer stroll – they are all real people.

 

And so is she.

 

How bizarre.

 

River has been in more than her fair share of bizarre situations, but this one may just rank higher than all the rest of them combined.

 

Especially because she really doesn’t know when, how, or if she’s going to get out of it.

 

What did her darling idiot husband expect, really? For her to just shrug off everything that’s happened, joyfully embrace living in a body that’s not her own and fly off, alone, into the sunset?

 

Fat chance. Idiot man.

 

It’s not that she doesn’t _like_ this body – quite the opposite – but she really doesn’t feel that she can appreciate it properly from the inside. She would rather be running a hand through his adorably floppy hair, tracing his smile with her fingertips… Oh, great. Now she misses him.

 

“You know, I don’t believe for a second that you would actually abandon the TARDIS,” says the Ninth Doctor’s voice, his voice suddenly in her ear startling her enough to drop the ice cream all down her front, with the cone landing upside-down on her foot. “Interesting new desktop, though.”

 

River sighs. “Fine. You got me. Off back to your own ship now, bye-bye…”

 

“Can’t,” the Doctor says, shrugging.

 

“What do you mean, _can’t?_ ”

 

“I lost her.”

 

“You what?”

 

“Can’t find her anywhere. Popped out this morning for breakfast and when I got back she was gone.” He grins. “But _you_ must remember where she is.”

 

“I suppose you would think that, wouldn’t you.”

 

His brows knit. “You mean you don’t,” he deduces.

 

“Got it in one. It’s… complicated,” she tells him.

 

“Oh?” he asks casually, raising his eyebrows.

 

“Now don’t look so interested,” she warns. “It’s all very boring and mundane.”

 

“Liar.”

 

River picks at the ice cream on her shirt, not deigning to reply.

 

“So what brings you to sunny London?”

 

She looks at him askance. “If I wasn’t you, I’d think that was a pick-up line.”

 

“But you are me.”

 

“Apparently.”

 

“Any hints as to what the future will bring, aside from an appalling dress sense?”

 

River clears her throat. “I happen to think I look very dashing.” Not that he looks so bad himself but no, _no_ she mustn’t flirt with him when he thinks she’s him. She doesn’t want to encourage bad habits.

 

The Doctor snorts. “Well, I guess we’ve seen worse.”

 

“Very true.”

 

They round a corner and find the TARDIS there waiting for them behind a hedge.

 

The Doctor grins. “I think she’s trying to tell us something.”

 

“And I think she’s being an interfering busybody.” River glares pointedly at the TARDIS, who exudes an aura of innocence and opens the door invitingly. Giving in, River steps forward. “I hate it when she does this.”

 

“Does what?” the Doctor says, following her inside.

 

“Acts all smug.”

 

“Really?” He crosses his arms, surveying the console room. “I kind of like it.”

 

“Masochist.”

 

Any reply he might have made is cut short by the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising.

 

River leans against the console, sighing. “What do you think her plans for us are?”

 

“Who knows? Something life-threatening, no doubt. She does seem to delight in throwing us into mortal peril.” He grins, and River finds herself grinning back.

 

“How true.”

 

“Do you always drape yourself over her like that? No wonder she’s feeling smug.”

 

River bolts upright, realising too late that perhaps she should be paying more attention to body language. “Not usually,” she lies. The telltale sound of the engines has stopped, but they haven’t materialised anywhere. “We’re parked in the vortex,” she points out needlessly, hoping to steer the conversation away from this Doctor’s future self.

 

“Yep.” He crosses his arms and leans against the door frame.

 

“Right.” She stares at him, and decides abruptly that she really, _really_ needs to be alone for a moment. Before her head explodes. “I’ll just…” she begins, stepping backwards towards the nearest corridor.

 

“Right,” he echoes, shrugging.

 

As soon as she’s around the corner, River runs towards the first door she finds and yanks it open, slamming it shut behind her and squeezing her eyes shut. She bangs her head slowly against the door before her nose tells her exactly where she is, and she exhales with something between a sigh and a sob.

 

Of course, of _course_ it’s their bedroom.

 

Letting her shaking legs carry her the few steps to the bed, River collapses on top of it, deflated.

 

“What _is_ this?” she demands. Her voice is muffled by the thick duvet pressing against her face, but it’s not like the TARDIS will be listening with her _ears_ in any case. “What is this stupid, stupid scheme you’ve cooked up between the two of you? I don’t _want_ this, I…” She swallows angrily. “I was _happy_ , damn you. I had finally, _finally_ reached a place where I was happy there, and you just—you only ever think about _him_ , don’t you? Both of you! Just because he feels guilty, he should take my place? He won’t last a week in there without getting bored and trying to escape, and when he can’t—”

 

She stops abruptly, feeling sick.

 

“No,” she says forcibly. “No, no, don’t you _dare_ tell me that I’m supposed to get him out. Don’t you dare. He can’t manage it himself so he’s trying to foist the job on me?”

 

The TARDIS’ lack of response is all the confirmation she needs.

 

“Oh, I hate him,” River sighs.

 

The lack of response to _that_ just hurts.

 

Anger driving her back into movement, River savagely pushes herself back to her feet and stalks towards the bathroom, where she peels the Doctor’s ice cream-covered clothes from her body and very resolutely does not remember any times when she had done a similar thing under much better circumstances – at least until she throws his shirt onto the tiled floor and realises that there’s writing scrawled across his forearm.

 

Just three words.

 

_No you don’t._

 

The tears are involuntary, and they hurt.

 

The impact when she loses her footing and crashes to the floor does not.

 

“Damn you,” she chokes, leaning back against the wall and tracing the words with her fingers. “You always were right about that.”

 

River wipes her eyes in the back of her hand – no mascara to mess up, that’s a plus – and tries to compose herself.

 

For some reason he thinks she’s better suited to the job than she. For some equally obscure reason, the TARDIS thinks his younger self can help her. That at least should mean that she has some chance of success, right? The ship generally has some idea of what is and is not impossible, after all.

 

So. It’s possible. That’s all she needs to know, isn’t it?

 

It will do for now, she tells herself firmly. The rest will hopefully reveal itself in time.

 

River heaves herself to her feet – which are a great deal farther away from the rest of her than she is used to, no wonder the Doctor is so uncoordinated – and squints down in confusion at the waistband of his trousers.

 

There seems to be more writing there.

 

Curious, she pushes his trousers and underpants down and contorts herself until she can read the message.

 

There is an arrow pointing downwards, above which is written in capital letters, _BE CAREFUL WITH THIS! MORE FRAGILE THAN YOU THINK!_

And River finds herself laughing so hard she falls back down.

 

 

There is one more message inked carefully across the Doctor’s skin. She discovers it when she peels off his left sock; just one word followed by a question mark, but it makes the breath catch in her throat.

 

_Ramserbaz?_

 

“ _Yes_ ,” she breathes, and she scrambles to get clean, get dressed, and grab the Doctor on the way out.

 

 

The planet of Ramserbaz is the fifth in the Merinax system and the only one which is habitable. River has been there before, a long time ago. She never expected to be visiting it again.

 

Never wanted to, to tell the truth, but here she is.

 

Her own voice is coming over the intercom, echoing in the crowded covered square she now stands in with the Doctor. She barely remembers speaking the words – only what had driven her to do so.

 

 _“I need the key to these files,”_ she insists. “ _If I don’t get it in the next hour, I will destroy this planet and everyone on it. The records will be gone, either way_.”

 

“Somebody’s desperate,” the Doctor remarks. The people around them are hushed, too aware of their own helplessness to scream and rage at the threat from the girl in the tower a mile away. The only people who could help had fled the moment River gunned down the doors, she remembers all too well.

 

Well. The only _other_ people.

 

“She is desperate,” River replies. It’s odd, talking about herself in the third person, seeing these events unfold from the other side of the force screen that surrounds the building her younger self is currently running through in a rage, punching and kicking at anything that reminds her of her previous visits to the place, mind whirling with the prospect of erasing herself from its history and what she is prepared to do to ensure it. “She can’t be safe while those records exist.”

 

“You know, the thing I’ve found about records,” the Doctor observes, following her without question as she begins to thread her way through the crowds, “Is that there are almost always copies.”

 

River nods shortly, rounding a corner to jog down a narrow staircase. “That’s why we’re here.”

 

The subterranean corridors are almost empty, everyone who can having parked themselves near a loudspeaker in order to stay abreast of what the crazy girl in the tower is doing. The few people who pass them in the dark, narrow space barely spare them a glance.

 

“Who is she?” the Doctor asks after a moment, keeping pace beside her.

 

“A scared, broken girl,” River tells him. “But we can help.”

 

“How do you know?” There’s something in his voice when he says it and she turns to look at him, but the dim light doesn’t reveal enough for her to read his expression properly.

 

“Trust me,” she says, turning away again. “I’m the Doctor.”

 

“So am I,” he points out. “and I’m the last person anyone should trust.”

 

“Well, that makes two of us.” River fights an urge to take his hand, and picks up the pace instead. “Doesn’t mean we can’t do this, though.”

 

“Is this still something we do?”

 

She frowns, turning again to see him walking beside her with a look of consternation on his face. “What do you mean?”

 

“This.” He gestures vaguely. “Saving the day.”

 

“Yes,” she assures him. “Often. Why?”

 

He shrugs. “Think I’m a bit rusty.”

 

River can’t resist taking his hand then, tugging him along beside her. “Best get back into practice then.”

 

 

Of course the first obstacle they run into is the force screen – quite literally. They’re jogging down the corridor and all of a sudden find themselves being thrown backwards, their path blocked by the invisible barrier.

 

“Damn,” River mutters, rubbing her shoulder where it hit the wall. Her fingers come away covered with the black slime that lines the corridors and she grimaces, wiping them on her trousers. A mental net cast into the past only brings up her confusion and sudden panic when the screen went down, no technical details. “I don’t know how we do this.”

 

The Doctor reaches into his jacket and pulls out his sonic screwdriver. “Start with the obvious, shall we?”

 

“Yes,” she agrees quickly, reaching into her own pockets – is her – his – screwdriver even here? She can feel a banana in there, psychic paper, a spare bowtie… ah. “Snap,” she declares, flourishing it.

 

The Doctor flicks a switch, and his grin is illuminated. “Race you,” he says, bounding across the small space to the force screen.

 

A matching grin spreads over River’s face before she can stop it. “You’re on.”

 

For a while there is nothing but the faint glow and buzzing of a sonic screwdriver on either side of the corridor. River works through all the most likely settings meticulously, losing to temptation every once in a while to glance over and see how the Doctor is faring. His expression is intent, his ear pressed against the wall from time to time to judge the vibrations, and after the third or forth glance River has to swallow resolutely and promise herself not to look any more. Not if she wants to keep the unshed tears in her eyes from spilling over and causing all manner of difficult questions.

 

Oh, but she’s missed him. Missed _this_.

 

“Okay, clearly racing’s not the way to do it,” the Doctor says abruptly, and River blinks and realises that the force screen is flickering in front of them. In time with the resonance caused by the two screwdrivers’ buzzing.

 

“…Oh,” she says, realising.

 

The Doctor moves his screwdriver down against the wall until it reaches the ground, as far as it can possibly be from River’s. Standing by the opposite wall, River raises hers above her head as far as it will go.

 

The flickering of the force field slows.

 

“Can you make it?” she asks the Doctor.

 

He frowns. “Not sure. You?”

 

“I can give it a shot.”

 

Without waiting for an answer, River counts under her breath and then, squeezing her eyes shut, skips through the force screen as it flickers off.

 

Grinning, she throws the screwdriver into the air and catches it again, smiling jauntily at the Doctor on the other side. He’s saying something but she can’t hear him – not that she needs to.

 

River smiles and nods in response to his gesturing, and points at herself and then the corridor extending out beyond the force screen.

 

The Doctor nods back, turns on his heel, and runs away.

 

In the opposite direction, River does the same.

 

Holding the screwdriver up high over her head, she considers distance and frequency as she runs, listening to the sound of the force screen fizzling in and out of existence at an ever-slower rate.

 

River slows too, holding her breath, and comes to a stop.

 

Silence.

 

Feeling the smile creep over her face, she turns back to see the Doctor’s face a few hundred metres away illuminated by his own screwdriver, wearing an identical grin.

 

“Ready?” he shouts.

 

“Always!” she replies, waving the screwdriver.

 

Together, they point the screwdrivers at the space between them where the force screen was and activate them.

 

A blinding flash means River has to squeeze her eyes closed and shield them with her free hand, but when she opens them it is to find the Doctor running towards her, right through where the now inert force screen had been.

 

“What next?” he demands as he pulls up next to her, face flushed, and she ignores the way her hearts beat faster at the sight of him.

 

“There’s a cloaked time ship parked on the roof of the tower,” she tells him, already turning to jog down the corridor. “Rigged with some nasty weapons, hooked up to a remote control. You de-hook them; I’ll get the remote.”

 

“You’re on.”

 

His enthusiasm is so infectious she almost forgets what awaits her in the tower’s control room.

 

 

River was scared.

 

Not that she would ever, _ever_ admit that to anyone, because she didn’t do opening up. It would take a whole lot more time for her to even begin to get there, because this was a freshly-minted River Song, still not sure what that meant and what she should be doing with herself, so she was spending some time making sure she’d be able to make that choice.

 

Ramserbaz had been her home for a long time, and most of that time she was glad she had forgotten. What she hadn’t forgotten was the look on the scientists’ faces as they poked and prodded at her, took sample after sample of her blood and tried to work out exactly how she worked.

 

As far as she knew they had never succeeded, but the information was there. Every atom of her body catalogued and analysed, all tests performed anew for each regeneration.

 

If she wanted to be truly free, it had to go. All of it. She refused to be less of an enigma to them than she was to herself.

 

She had landed on the planet with a fairly simple plan in mind. Point guns, make threats, get what she wanted. But of course it hadn’t quite worked out that way, and that was why she was currently holed up in the control room, trying in vain to hack the system, checking the clock every two minutes to see how much longer she had left. Stupid, really, to give them such a short time before she blew them to smithereens… but she had been more worried initially about them having time to mobilise some kind of defense. She hadn’t counted on the people in power being such cowards as to just run away.

 

And now the prospect of having to carry out her threat was causing her precious minutes in lost concentration.

 

She didn’t want to kill everyone. She didn’t want to kill _anyone_. But she had said she would, and if there was anything River Song was very bad at, it was backing down.

 

Especially when someone she thought was the Doctor came to try and talk her out of it.

 

 

River remembers how it ended, of course – but time can be rewritten. She needs to tread carefully if she wants her timeline to remain intact.

 

She finds her younger self in the familiar room, its cold, grey walls enclosing the quietly whirring and blinking machinery, bringing her fist down on the main control panel, tears of frustration running down her cheeks as she begins yet another attempt to destroy the files that she knows will be futile. She starts when River-as-the-Doctor enters the room and shoots upright, fist still balled defensively.

 

She doesn’t say anything – because she’s embarrassed to be caught like this, River remembers. Not that either of them will mention that fact.

 

She approaches her younger self warily, perfectly aware of the remote triggering mechanism hung around her neck, the chain of which she is already fingering nervously. “River,” she begins, suddenly very, very aware of the fact that the vocal cords she is using are not her own, that her voice doesn’t sound the way she expects it to and that the real Doctor has entirely different speech patterns from her own. Resisting the urge to clear her throat, she continues, “Please, let me help.”

 

“I don’t need your help,” her counterpart lies instantly. It will take her a long time before she learns to accept it without a fight. Unfortunately, right now they don’t have a long time.

 

“I never said you did,” River replies, as smoothly as she can. “But I would like to.”

 

Younger River eyes her cagily, slowly bringing her hand back to rest against the controls in an almost protective manner. She still doesn’t quite trust the Doctor, River knows – has been intentionally avoiding him, in fact, because the intensity of the love he has for her is absolutely terrifying. She’s still convinced that she’s too broken to deserve love from anybody.

 

And she doesn’t realise yet that he feels the same.

 

“How?” she asks eventually, narrowing her eyes.

 

“I can access the files,” River replies calmly, holding up the sonic screwdriver.

 

“And delete them?”

 

“And delete them,” River confirms. “Permanently.”

 

She doesn’t tell her that she’s planning to keep most of them. _Can_ does not mean _will._

 

“Why do you want to help me?” the younger her asks abruptly. “What have I done to deserve your help?”

 

“Oh, so much,” she replies without hesitation. “You saved my life, remember?”

 

“I can read the files,” the other River says, changing the subject in a way even she knows is glaringly obvious. Still, this one is just as important. “I haven’t got editing rights, but I can read them.” She pauses, resolutely not blinking. “They’ve got ones on this body as well, almost as detailed as the others.” She swallows, and River struggles not to flinch with the memory of that nasty discovery. “They’re going to find me again, aren’t they?”

 

“Briefly,” River admits.

 

“And then what?”

 

“And then, River Song, you save my life again. And then your life truly begins.”

 

“How?”

 

River shrugs reluctantly, aware of what’s coming next. “Spoilers.”

 

Her other self is trying to decide how to react to that response when an alarm starts to blare from the speakers around them, and River tenses instinctively. This is where it gets serious.

 

“Their time has run out,” younger River says dully, her hand reaching for the remote around her neck almost of its own accord.

 

“That doesn’t matter now,” River tells her. “I can fix it for you.”

 

“I don’t need you to fix anything for me,” she insists. “I can fix this all by my self.”

 

A split second of hesitation and she grabs River by the Doctor’s sleeve, tugging at the remote with her other hand.

 

And nothing happens.

 

River breathes a sigh of relief even as her alter ego drops her hand and fiddles frantically with the remote. “What did you do?” she hisses. “What have you _done?_ ”

 

“What I had to,” River replies, mentally praising the Doctor for managing to disable the receiver in time. The remote was supposed to transport River from the tower and activate the weapons almost simultaneously – the fact that that hasn’t happened means he’s succeeded.

 

“What did you _do?_ ” her younger self shouts, flinging the remote control in River’s face – and control is what it’s about, of course. It’s just been taken from her, and she doesn’t like that one bit.

 

“I couldn’t let you kill all those people.”

 

“Who are you to _let_ me do anything?”

 

“I’m someone who cares about you. And I care about what you do and how you feel about yourself, and that would _not_ have improved your sense of self-worth, believe me.” _Believe me because I_ know.

 

“But why should you care? I tried to kill you, why should you care at all about what happens to me?” Her voice is unsteady now, and she’s blinking back tears, and River remembers exactly how wretched this felt and she can’t take going through it again, so she steps forward and wraps her arms around herself.

 

“I care because you are a good person, River Song, and you can never convince me otherwise. And sometimes you’ll hate me for that, and sometimes you’ll be grateful, but it will always be true.” What she thought were the Doctor’s words have been burned into her memory for so long, it’s hard to believe it wasn’t really him who spoke them.

 

She wonders if he would have, if she was really him.

 

The tears spill out of her younger self’s eyes, then, hot and fast onto River’s neck, and she feels her little fingers – funny how tiny they seem when she’s not the one attached to them – digging into the front of the Doctor’s shirt, so hard her nails press against her skin through the material, and she sobs loudly.

 

This is the first time River ever remembers crying. She was always too strong for that, before. But this is the moment when she realised that accepting comfort just took a different kind of strength.

 

Funny to realise that the Doctor was never really here at all. This epiphany is all her own doing. For some reason that feels good.

 

“You want me to delete those files?” she asks eventually.

 

Her younger self nods, still sniffling.

 

One hand still holding her close, River looks around and holds up the screwdriver. It doesn’t take long to copy the files and delete them from the hard drive.

 

“There,” she lies, tucking the screwdriver back into the Doctor’s pocket. “All gone.”

 

The answering whisper would have been almost indecipherable if River didn’t remember exactly what she had said.

 

_Thank you._

 

 

She finds the Doctor on the roof, kneeling by a mound of explosives he is dismantling carefully. The light of the setting sun reflecting off them makes them look bizarrely beautiful.

 

“You get the remote?” he asks, not looking up from the wires he is disentangling.

 

“No,” she confesses. “But she won’t be doing anything like this again.” Not in the near future, anyway.

 

“You talked to her?”

 

“Yep. Pulled her back from the brink of mass murder.” She shivers at the thought, and decides not to let him know how close she had come.

 

 _Mass murder_ may not have been the right term to use, actually, because the Doctor freezes – except for his hands. She can just make out that they’re shaking.

 

“Lucky girl,” he says eventually.

 

“Yes,” River agrees. “Thanks to us.”

 

“Nobody did that for us.”

 

“Nobody could have. But we can do it for others.”

 

“What for?” he asks bitterly.

 

River kneels down opposite, looking at him expectantly until he meets her eyes with a sigh.

 

“Because nobody did for us,” she tells him.

 

After a moment, he nods and gets back to work.

 

And she’s glad that she’s not really him, because she’s not at all sure that he could speak words of encouragement to himself, even after all this time.

 

 

She waits until he’s busy in the control room admiring the time rotor before she hurries down to her lab – dark and disused, which gets to her more than she’d care to admit – and uploads the data from the screwdriver.

 

It’s there, it’s all there – all the data she needs to create a new body. Three new bodies, in fact – Melody or Mels or River.

 

The choice will be easy, of course. How to get herself into a position to make that choice is… less so.

 

She’s got the data, but she hasn’t got the hardware. The TARDIS may be many things, but a resurrection machine she is not.

 

So. Where to find one?

 

She has a feeling this problem will be a tad more difficult to solve than that of finding the young Doctor’s TARDIS again, and she doesn’t know how to do that either.

 

Pondering both problems, she heads to the kitchen to make some tea, only to find the Doctor already there pouring the kettle.

 

“You read my mind,” she says, raising an eyebrow as she flops down into the nearest chair.

 

He shrugs. “I am you.”

 

“That could be it.” She accepts a cup gratefully and does not comment on how his taste has changed – or will change – from the Doctor she is used to, who likes his cup to be at least half full of cream and sugar.

 

This one takes it black.

 

He takes a big gulp and looks away, swallowing loudly and valiantly trying to pretend he hasn’t just burned his mouth.

 

“Doctor.” River smirks as she watches him, and then slowly frowns when he doesn’t reply, clutching his teacup tightly and brooding into it like it holds the secrets of the universe and he’s not sure he likes them all. “Doctor, pay attention, this is important,” she demands a little more firmly, reaching out automatically to rest her hand on his – only he clearly wasn’t expecting her touch because he starts. His cup flies almost half a foot in the air and lands in the middle of the table, tendrils of tea spilling out from the broken porcelain like the arms of a big spider.

 

“Sorry,” he says, jerking to his feet and reaching for a cloth, but River barely notices.

 

_Pay attention._

_Like a spider._

 

“ _Oh_ ,” she breathes.

 

Perhaps she was wrong.

 

 

_River, pay attention, this is important._

She bites her lip as she programs the message for her past self, very conscious of the Doctor peering over her shoulder in the abandoned control room on New Mars. No wonder the message was so cryptic – anything more will lead to too many questions.

 

It’s leading to more than enough as is.

 

“What river?” the Doctor asks pushily, reaching out to fiddle with the buttons before she slaps his hand away and he shoots her a grumpy look. “This is a desert planet. There are no rivers.”

 

“You’ll come here in the future,” she tells him, which is mostly true. “It’ll all make sense when you do.”

 

“Will it, now?” He reaches for a lever and she pushes him away again with a sigh, studying the controls for a few moments before deciding that that’s not the way to go about getting what she wants.

 

“One day,” she promises, striding to one of the doors in the side of the room and pushing it open. Without a word, she turns to put her back to it and gives him a little wave before jumping backwards and through the opening. Just to see how he’ll react to her messing with him this way.

 

“Oi!” the Doctor yells, sticking his head out after her remarkably quickly and scowling when he finds her clinging to the handholds below. “Show-off.”

 

“Like you’re not,” she says breezily, climbing down until she can swing from the bottom of the building and let herself fall to the ground. The Doctor follows, albeit with more than one eye-roll, and drops down beside her.

 

“There’s a trapdoor here somewhere,” River informs him, already scouring the sand with her eyes. “Help me find it, would you?”

 

“Trapdoor to where?” he asks, obeying without hesitation and going off to search in the opposite direction.

 

“Big subterranean structure. Probably bigger than the supraterranean.” She looks up at the glistening metal building above them, which is hardly unimpressive on its own, and gently pushes the guilt that she associates with it back into the darker recesses of her mind.

 

“And what’s down there?” He’s wandered quite a way away now, and his voice is noticeably fainter.

 

River is distracted though, by the unmistakable form of a handle under her foot. “Ah- _ha_ ,” she declares triumphantly, reaching down to brush away the sand and curl her fingers around it.

 

The trapdoor opens more easily than she remembers, and she has had the foresight to bring rope this time. She anchors it securely around a post stuck deep in the sand and glances at the Doctor in the distance, who seems to have stopped searching altogether and is staring at something out of sight instead.

 

With a shrug, River climbs down on her own and shines her torch around.

 

There is one specimen of what she is looking for right there in the middle of the room, amongst a mess of cables leading up to the ceiling, but she purposely avoids that one. She doesn’t want to change her past, after all, at least not that part.

 

Besides, there are plenty more.

 

Grabbing a couple off the floor just in case, River then pulls out her scanner and points it at the complicated machinery that dominates the centre of the dark chamber. It’s connected to the control room upstairs and while she thinks she has the basics figured out, the finer points of its construction escape her for the moment.

 

Not that she needs to know why it works for what she has planned. She just needs to know _how_.

 

And she thinks that, just maybe, she’s got it.

 

Triumphant for now, River pockets the scanner and takes the rope in hand again, looking up hopefully at the trapdoor. “Doctor?” she calls, straining to see any sign of him against the bright sky above. “Care to help me up?”

 

When there is no answer after a few moments she harrumphs, grips the rope more firmly, and climbs up by herself.

 

The Doctor’s long limbs are surprisingly good for climbing.

 

Unfortunately they are also good for being grabbed by something unidentifiable in the gloom below.

 

River yelps, barely managing to keep her grip as something vice-like pulls steadily at her ankle. The rope burns her hands as she is tugged slowly downwards, and she decides to sacrifice the strength of  her painful grasp on the rope to reach for her gun.

 

She fires off three shots in quick succession, the light from the blast reflecting off something metal and mean-looking and very definitely arachnoid in shape. It shivers when the alpha-meson bursts hit it, but does not react further except to clench a gleaming claw around her other ankle as well, yanking her to the floor.

 

Her shoulder hits the ground with a _crack_ , and she barely has time to be grateful it wasn’t her head before she is yanked backwards and another of the thing’s limbs hits her right between the legs.

 

Oh. Oh God.

 

_Ouch._

He was definitely right about the _fragile_ part.

 

She thinks she must have blacked out for just a moment because the next thing she knows she’s being suspended high up in the air again, most likely being readied for another nice smack on the floor, but she’s better prepared this time. Just as she reaches the highest point of her ascent she reaches out and grabs a handful of cables, yanking them free of their moorings and exposing their sparking insides. Praying that an electric shock won’t cause her to regenerate, she braces herself and presses the live wires against the farthest piece of the monster, and she fires her gun at the protrusion on its head that is hopefully an eye or a mouth or something equally sensitive.

 

The creature jerks once, and disintegrates.

 

River falls to the floor again, unable to breathe from the shock or the fall or both, and all she can think is that this is the reason nothing attacked her here last time she was here, and that she didn’t find a body then either, so maybe she lives.

 

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

 

“Doctor!” she hears a voice yell faintly, and it takes a moment for her to remember that that’s her. She’s vaguely aware of a scrabbling above her, and then her leather-clad saviour leaps down beside her.

 

She tries to speak and only manages a wheezing sound, but he’s there now, looking at her intently and assessing the situation, and with a quick blow to her chest he has her wheezing more strongly, gasping for breath but slowly regaining it.

 

“Thanks,” she manages, glad that for once she doesn’t have to hide the fact that she has two hearts from a young Doctor.

 

“No problem.” His expression remains sombre for a moment before he breaks into a grin. “I found her!” he declares, jumping to his feet and going to take the end of the rope. He pulls her into a sitting position and secures it under her arms before jumping up and clambering up it towards the trapdoor.

 

“Found her!” he declares gleefully.

 

“The TARDIS?” she asks, trying not to sound too groggy.

 

“That’s right!”

 

He reaches the top quickly and disappears, but he can’t have gone far because River finds herself being pulled up behind him, suspended by the rope. She scrambles out of the hole and onto the sand to be greeted by the sight of the big blue box parked only feet away, the rope disappearing inside obviously connected to some kind of motor.

 

The tugging stops and moments later the Doctor appears at the door with a knife, slashing the rope from around her chest. “Alright?” he asks jovially, helping her to her feet. He leans back against the ship, beaming. “Sorry I wasn’t there to help, I got a bit distracted. She just turned up.”

 

River finds herself oddly dismayed – this means he’s leaving. “Good,” she says anyway, nodding. “You must have done whatever it was she wanted you to do.”

 

“Seen what she wanted me to see, perhaps,” he agrees, looking at her intently for a moment before shrugging and reaching out to brush some imaginary dust off the ship’s window frame.

 

“Yes.” A smile reaches her face despite her misgivings. “Precisely.”

 

“Well!” He grasps the doorframe firmly, as though he wants to reassure himself that it’s there, and nods cordially. “I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

 

“You will indeed.” She returns the nod, fiercely ignoring the pain in her throat as she swallows.

 

Then, the next time he opens his mouth, she interrupts him.

 

“Oh, what the hell,” she exclaims, stepping forward to wrap his stiff frame in her arms. It’s still better than nothing – her Doctor, real and solid in her embrace. It will do, she tells herself firmly.

 

The Doctor clears his throat awkwardly when she lets him go, and disappears into his TARDIS with nothing more than another nod.

 

River feels rather bereft as she watches them disappear. He wasn’t the Doctor she knew, but damn him if he wasn’t a hundred times better than nothing.

 

She reaches into the bag for her loot, and holds one of the resurrection cubes up to the light.

 

Well. With any luck, she’ll have a Doctor she knows back soon enough.

 

 

It’s not simple, of course – and frankly she would worry if it was. Something as complicated as resurrection should not be easy.

 

But she thinks she can do it.

 

She spends days studying the cubes, examining every last detail of the hardware and software. The data format is complex and not quite like anything she’s come across before, which is both impressive and daunting – she had better make damned sure she knows what she’s doing before she retrieves the Doctor’s digital record from the Library, a tricky enough task on its own.

 

She has to force herself to sleep. Too dangerous to be messing around with this when she’s tired, but not easy to lie in bed without him and convince herself that everything will be fine. She’s spent plenty of nights away from him, of course, but never on the TARDIS, on her own.

 

She understands now why he never slept in their bed when she wasn’t there with him. At first that’s where she goes, automatically, but the room is full of his absence and it drives her from it quickly, to a functional little room she hasn’t seen before but which is exactly what she needs. He’s not just around the corner taking a shower, or bouncing around the control room like a maniac, or even off putting himself in mortal danger on some planet or another. He’s waiting for her to bring him back to life.

 

No pressure, right?

 

He never needed as much sleep as she did, and in this body now she’s often really not sure how much is good for her. If she sleeps too much she feels even more wretched than when she sleeps too little. No wonder he always preferred to stay awake.

 

 _Prefers_ , she corrects herself firmly. Present tense.

 

But it’s hard to think of him as alive when she’s alone on his ship.

 

The TARDIS helps, of course, as much as she seems able – gentle nudges in what River hopes is the right direction. And eventually she realises that she’s just stalling.

 

She’s as ready as she’ll ever be.

 

 

She doesn’t warn him; he didn’t warn _her_ , after all. Fair is fair.

 

Assuming she can get him back alive. It wouldn’t really be fair to suck him out of the computer and effectively kill him by failing to provide him a receptacle, but truth be told she doesn’t think she can speak to him right now. In case it doesn’t work.

 

Or in case it does.

 

She finds herself worrying her bottom lip – or his, rather, which is much less satisfying somehow – for a good few minutes, parked in orbit and working up the nerve to flick the switch. It’s not until the TARDIS whirrs impatiently that she realises she’s bitten herself hard enough to break the skin, and she has to go and clean up before she can do the deed.

 

Can’t have him complaining that she’s damaged his body, after all. Assuming she can ever get him back into it, at least, which is not a given at this stage.

 

But first things first.

 

Clenching her teeth together to keep them from doing any more harm, River takes a deep breath, and flicks the switch.

 

Nothing appears to happen, but that was what she was expecting. It should be fine, she tells herself, running over to the cube hooked up to the wires on the other side of the console. The readings are all as they should be, and she lets out a breath, running her fingertips delicately over the smooth surface. “Are you in there, sweetie?” she breathes, suppressing a shiver.

 

There’s no answer, of course, so she clenches her teeth together again and grabs the controls to pilot them to the location needed for the second phase of the plan.

 

She’s prepared the connecting cables in advance – all she needs to do is haul the ends into the TARDIS from the New Mars resurrection chamber, and to take the cube to the centre of the room to hook it up. It feels odd, holding such a small, light thing and knowing that the person inside is more precious to her right now than anything else in the universe. Almost like carrying a baby.

 

She’ll have to remember to tell him that analogy, she thinks, smirking despite the tension trying to burrow itself into every muscle in her body. He won’t like it at all. It might even warrant a pouty face.

 

God, she misses his stupid adorable pouty face.

 

The cube clicks into place in the little indent she removed the spider-king’s box from earlier – must remember to put that back, when she’s done. When she has her husband back.

 

Although she supposes he’ll be her wife, technically. She wonders what he’ll think of that.

 

Climbing the rope ladder she’s installed to help her up to the trap door, River ignores the clenching of the stomach as the little cube disappears out of sight and she steps onto the planet’s sandy surface.

 

One more button to press.

 

A second rope ladder takes her to the structure above, where she jogs to the central control panel, activates the device, prays for success to whoever might be listening, and runs back to the door. There is already a lightning bolt of energy sizzling between the bottom of the building and the ground, so she pulls the ladder up, grabs a rung near the bottom, and jumps down.

 

Stupidly, she hasn’t calculated just how far from the bottom she should have attached herself in this tall body, and her feet hit the ground painfully.

 

River grimaces in agony as she stands up straight, watching the energy slowly flicker into a humanoid shape. So much for not damaging his body.

 

Finally the lightning disappears, leaving only a woman.

 

For now.

 

The Doctor raises her hand slowly to her face –his, for the moment – wriggling the fingers carefully. And then he catches sight of her.

 

“River…” he breathes, letting the hand fall back to his side.

 

So that’s what her voice sounds like with his ears. No wonder he likes it so much.

 

“How did you know?” she asks, taking a step forward.

 

“Oh, I would know you anywhere, you magnificent woman,” he declares, stepping towards her as well until they meet where the shadow of the structure overhead meets the melting heat of the sun and she feels him touch her with her own fingers, delicately cupping her face and bringing it closer to his. “I knew you could do it,” he says softly. The side of his mouth twitches up. “Even if you were stuck looking like me.”

 

River smirks. “There are worse people to look like.”

 

“Yeah. Just be glad you didn’t get stuck with my Ninth incarnation.”

 

“I thought he was quite handsome, actually.”

 

He looks almost hurt. “You…?”

 

“Oh, shut up and come here,” she tells him, sick of standing so close to him without doing anything about it, and presses her lips to his.

 

It’s strange how not strange it feels, kissing him when he’s her and she’s him and everything is backwards. But he’s _in there_ , she can feel him, feel the tears of relief they are both shedding getting trapped between their skin… besides which, his kissing technique hasn’t changed at all.

 

When they break apart it’s only so they can look at each other again, both grinning giddily.

 

She has to break the moment though, because much as this is interesting and new River has a sudden ache for the old and familiar.

 

“Go on, then,” she says. “Lost totem of Harifex. Where the hell did you put it?”

 

 

 _Under the bed,_ the answer turns out to be.

 

“I should have known,” she says fondly, shaking her head as she watches her admittedly rather nice backside as he wiggles back out with the totem.

 

“It is really weird hearing you talk with my voice,” the Doctor says, struggling to pull the box out after him. “Don’t you think it’s weird?”

 

“I quite like it, actually,” River admits. “Perhaps we should experiment a bit before we swap back.”

 

He stands then, flushed. “Perhaps we should swap back and then experiment with more swapping later,” he says, opening the old-fashioned clasp on the box. He looks down at the small, shiny contraption inside, hesitating for a moment to meet her eyes again. “We’ve waited so long, River.”

 

The words send a shiver of anticipation down her spine. “How does it work, then?”

 

The grin as he sets the box on the bed and reverently lifts the totem out is infectious. “It’s incredibly simple, actually, without all the pesky modification I had to do to swap places with someone incorporeal.” He lays the device flat on his palm and holds it out to her. “Put your hand on top. Well, my hand. No, that sounds wrong too, like my hand is detached from my body and you’re just waving a severed hand about, eurgh.” He makes a face, looking up at her. “This is really complicated.”

 

“Sweetie,” River reminds him. “You just told me that it’s not.”

 

She puts her hand – his hand, their hand – on the totem.

 

 

Gasping for breath in her own body is entirely different from gasping for breath in his, which he is currently doing, loudly, on the floor beside her. Did she sound like that when she was him? God, she hopes not.

 

“River!” he declares breathlessly, his grin fighting unsuccessfully with the need to open his mouth as wide as it will go to gulp down mouthfuls of air. He looks ridiculous, in his usual adorable way.

 

“God, I’ve missed you,” she confesses, reaching for him with shaking hands, stroking his shirt, straightening his bowtie. She’s not sure she could stop touching him now if she tried.

 

“River,” he repeats, capturing her hands in his, pulling them up to his lips one after the other, burying his fingers in her hair and pulling her closer to kiss her again, and if the earlier one was bliss then this one is like heaven. They’re like two magnets that have finally been allowed to make contact, and River wraps a leg around his possessively and wonders if she’ll ever be able to let go of him again.

 

With any luck, she won’t have to.

 

 

He insists on taking her on a date, later on, though she insists just as vehemently that she’s extremely happy lying in bed holding onto him with a grip strong enough to make the spider-robot from New Mars rust with envy.

 

But the TARDIS is clearly on his side, because she lands entirely unprompted on a green hillside with a view of a stunning sunset.

 

“Trying to tell us something, dear?” River says grudgingly, running her fingers along the console and wrapping her dressing gown tighter around herself as she heads for the door.

 

“Ooh!” the Doctor declares excitedly, rummaging in one of the storage spaces below. He bounds up the stairs with a dinner jacket in one hand, a picnic basket in the other, and a bowtie slung messily around his neck. “I know why we’re here!” He pulls the half-open door back with his foot and steps outside, practically bouncing with glee. “Picnic,” he says, holding up the basket. He gestures expansively with the dinner jacket. “Asgaard.” Skipping along the hillside, he squints at something in the distance and breaks into a grin. “Take 2.”

 

“ _Oh_ ,” River says, following his gaze, letting his enthusiasm rub off on her despite herself. “I waited for this for years,” she confesses, catching up to him and stealing the picnic basket, inserting herself on his arm instead. “I’d convinced myself it was never going to happen.”

 

The Doctor smirks, snatching the picnic basket back from her and pulling out a blanket. “Don’t be so daft,” he says, spreading it out on the grass and himself on top of it. “We’ve got time to do _everything_ again now, and all the new things in the universe, and more. As if I would let _this_ not happen.”

 

“As if we would be here at all if it wasn’t for me,” River points out, kneeling down next to him. If she squints, she can just make out their younger selves in the distance.

 

“I was the one who found the totem.”

 

“I was the one who found the resurrection cubes.”

 

“Ah, but I was the one who brought you back to life.”

 

“And I was the one who worked out how to get my own body back.”

 

The Doctor pouts, scratching his nose. “Alright, maybe we’re even.”

 

River laughs, lying down next to him and intertwining her fingers with his. “It was a team effort.”

 

He nudges her with his shoulder. “I like Team Us.”

 

She nods. “Best team there is.”

 

And he kisses her again, and proves it.

 


End file.
